Paperback, 352 pages
Español language
Published March 8, 2021 by Capitán Swing.
Cuando el cambio climático global y las crisis económicas conducen al caos social a principios de la década de 2020, California se llena de peligros, desde la escasez generalizada de agua hasta las masas de vagabundos que harán cualquier cosa para sobrevivir otro día más. Lauren Olamina, una joven adolescente de quince años, vive dentro de una comunidad cerrada con su padre, un predicador, su familia y sus vecinos, relativamente protegida de la anarquía circundante. En una sociedad donde cualquier vulnerabilidad es un riesgo, ella sufre de hiperempatía, una sensibilidad debilitante hacia las emociones de los demás. Precoz y lúcida, Lauren debe hacer oír su voz para proteger a sus seres queridos de los desastres inminentes que su pequeña comunidad ignora obstinadamente. Pero lo que comienza como una lucha por la supervivencia pronto conduce al nacimiento de una nueva fe y a una sorprendente visión del destino humano.
Me deja un poco frío la idea de religión como sustituto del resto de las instituciones sociales en un tiempo apocalíptico, y no acabo de ver qué papel juega la hiperempatía en todo esto, si es mero atrezzo o un elemento verdaderamene importante. Lo veremos en el volumen dos.
Desde luego es un terreno de juego completamente diferente del de Xenogénesis.
Well written. Lauren feels real.
The end of this book is more of a beginning. There's much promise in the characters and Lauren's philosophy/ religion and what she calls Destiny - taking root among the stars. Maybe in the second book?
This might be a book that is worth re-reading.
On a second read, I feel a lot differently than I did the first time around. I can't separate uncomfortable feelings of reading about a teenager basically starting a cult and attracting people who are at their absolute most vulnerable to join. It doesn't sit well with me to read about Lauren's glee to "raise babies in Earthseed." And the intense, intense, dehumanization and otherizing of people using drugs, making them into physically unrecognizable monsters, is something I can't get past. If Lauren has hyper-empathy, and is more sensitive to people in need of help, then why does the buck stop with people using drugs?
When I heard an old interview of Octavia Butler on NPR, I was both very impressed and very surprised that I had never heard of her. She won a MacArthur Fellowship, Hugo, and Nebula awards. At the time, there were so few women's names in science fiction, and even fewer who were African American.
Still processing this book, but I think it might be one of my favorite sci-fi books I've recently read.
This is stronger in many respects on re-read, somehow my dystopia lens last time glossed the climate youth aspect, the neurodiversity aspect, the ways she keeps the story focused on community and change at the same time so structurally.
This book is so good and about halfway through I thought to figure out when it was written and then nearly fainted from shock. This woman was a prophet.
Once he's made everyone who isn't like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems they didn't cause. That's easier than trying to fix the problems.
This book cuts deep. The bleak and truly dystopian world portrayed here is very, very close to home. Because of how topical the book felt I expected this book to be published in 2015 or 2016, but no, the first publication was 1993!
This book was too real and possible. The memories of the dumpster fire of 2020 are not yet a distant memory, America is crumbling under the 45th President and I read this story the same week there was a failed coup on the US Capitol building. At a time I want escapism Parable of the Sower was an extension of reality. It was not only a glimpse in to what if but what will.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road …
Once he's made everyone who isn't like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems they didn't cause. That's easier than trying to fix the problems.
This book cuts deep. The bleak and truly dystopian world portrayed here is very, very close to home. Because of how topical the book felt I expected this book to be published in 2015 or 2016, but no, the first publication was 1993!
This book was too real and possible. The memories of the dumpster fire of 2020 are not yet a distant memory, America is crumbling under the 45th President and I read this story the same week there was a failed coup on the US Capitol building. At a time I want escapism Parable of the Sower was an extension of reality. It was not only a glimpse in to what if but what will.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a rough read, yet Parable of the Sower was more difficult for how prophetic it feels.
Take the following line from the book: Interesting that they fear Edward Jay Smith's supposed incompetence more than they fear Jarret's obvious tyranny.
Do a simple find and replace on a few characters and you have something that happened repeatedly Interesting that they fear Hillary Rodham Clinton's supposed incompetence more than they fear Donald's obvious tyranny.
The American events under Jarret's Presidency land uncomfortably close to reality. I found myself reeling from the similarities to real life that I was overlooking the story being told. A story of survival and hope, of looking for ways to improve society and have harmony. Cults have a bad connotation as being extreme and brainwashing their members and Earthseed would be criticized just as harshly in the fictional world Butler wrote of as it would be in real life.
Yet Andrew Steel Jarret was able to scare, divide, and bully people, first into electing him President, then into letting him fix the country for them. He didn't get to do everything he wanted to do. He was capable of much greater fascism. So were his most avid followers.
I needed a few chapters to understand the narrative perspectives and focus on the timelines and from there I was hooked. However, for all the pro's of Earthseed #1 I'm not sure the science fiction/fantasy part of the story is enough to keep me reading. Butler writes an enjoyable book but the story was almost too real for me to continue. I expect the next book to focus on the interstellar missions of Earthseed, and that creeps out of my genre preference and I lose interest.
Top marks for a brutally honest and frightening book that can be relevant and engaging nearly 30 years after it was written.
Absolutely brutal dystopia, and it feels so real it hurts. Recommended like a painful stretch after a long hike through difficult terrain.
I accidentally wound up with both the novel and the graphic novel based on the novel of Parable of the Sower. I read them together, reading ahead a bit in one, then going back to the other and reading to catch up and a bit ahead again. Wow, the story is excellent, and all the characters were really very interesting and complex.
blew my mind, changed the way i see the world and my fears and vision of future. but gave me hope. Realllly hard to drive n a freeway in so called los angeles and stare at the land on the sides.......
This was The Road level of depressing, not sure I'll read the sequel.
Truly prescient story about collapse, climate change, belief and humanity.
It touches on so much about human nature and our belief systems, and what it is like to survive in a hostile world whose structures are crumbling.
It is a bleak and grim read, but not without hope and brimming with ideas. Must read!
Quite a striking work of fiction, and one that's unforgettable. Very credibly-crafted tale of resilience in the face of unbelievable woe, and one that seems unfortunately fairly likely to occur if the world keeps on its current course.
--
Update: 6 months later, this book turns out to be one that I think of almost daily. It was hard to really grasp the gravity of the tales therein, or just how appropriate they are for the currently nigh-apocalyptic world we live in.
